Pebble e-watch smashes funding target

A new customisable electronic watch called the Pebble reached the developer's $100,000 funding goal on Kickstarter within two hours of the project being published.

"We're absolutely blown away by your support, Kickstarter! $100k in 2 hours must be a new record," wrote Pebble Technology on the Kickstarter page.

The firm had previously produced an electronic watch called the inPulse which coupled with the Blackberry smartphone. The new E-paper equipped Pebble is the first to be compatible with both iPhone and Android models.

Early bird Pebble watches for US$99 were quickly snapped up leaving pledges of $115 with $15 shipping as the price of entry for obtaining a Pebble watch when it's delivered in September.

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Connecting to smartphones via Bluetooth, the Pebble is customisable with uploadable apps as well as displaying alerts and messages from smartphone apps. Cycling, running and controlling music apps are a few of the suggested uses.

The watch faces can also be customised via a simple process of downloading new faces off a Pebble App store, or hackers can get their hands dirty by coding on smartphones or writing code for the watch directly.

One of the biggest surprises is that the e-paper display shown in the Kickstarter video updates so rapidly that simple animations are possible. The display technology no doubt also plays a role in the watch managing 7-days of use between charges.

The project has reached over $350,000 of a $100,000 funding goal with 37 days left to the 18th of May funding date.